


Flowering

by daredevilmoon



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-19
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:40:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3775849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daredevilmoon/pseuds/daredevilmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Chance meeting 10 years later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flowering

Through the years, the tracks of London had grown well-worn beneath Philip’s feet; he found himself all too often lamenting the state of such a thing when he allowed it thought. He had spent too much time there, simply put, as a sort of grandiose hiding-place from what seemed very much to be reality. Yet with the years, London too had become its own reality, awash in the changes of the war and the eroded pleasures which Philip had found within the city’s broad confines; it seemed as though he had, over years, trodden the bloom from many of his favourite paths.

Picadilly, however, was a rather different circumstance. These blooms grew in differing clusters about his feet as he walked rather than giving itself over entirely to his pleasure; it was a chance to explore, a chance find and seize the essence of blossoms which would wilt with or without his appearance.

His eyes lingered on the shopfronts for a moment, flickering up to catch a view of the various passersby before he was stopped dead in his tracks. It seemed like nothing so much as an old summer put to a vulgar repetition, some perverted scene from his past before he realised: No. That must be Thomas, no two men in England could carry all of history within without John Bull’s knees buckling beneath the weight. He caught those blue eyes tracing patterns in the passersby to what Philip could only assume was a similar end to his own designs and, seizing the opportunity, he quickened his pace until he fell in beside Thomas at the window of a ladies’ shoe display.

“Oh, yes, I would imagine the wife should love those,” Philip said; he could sense Thomas tensing as he refocused his gaze in the window to meet Philip’s own. “Of course, one can hardly tell from women, isn’t that so?”

“Right,” Thomas replied, obliquely. Philip wondered what was going through his head and prayed he wouldn’t walk away; Philip could hardly go after him from here. “Fashions do change, don’t they? In one Season, out the next.”

Ah.

“Even the Greeks had their say once more in the twenties. Last twenties,” Philip amended with a smile. “Everything comes back into fashion - and why not? Everyone was pleased for the time, then the needs changed.”

“Or the whims,” Thomas said. He frowned slightly, just enough to catch the sight of it before he reined it back into his neutral expression.

“I mean, everyone got so much more sensible. Those shoes,” Philip said, gesturing to whatever pair happened to have been closest, “you’d have never have seen those before. Everything was so much more - grand.”

“It didn’t change so long ago.”

“Nevermind the dates. Unless you really are here for ladies’ shoes, which is not the sort I ever took you for,” Philip said lightly, glancing sideways to catch Thomas smirking. Their eyes met for a moment and Thomas nearly laughed. “If nothing else, you know there’s a safe thing in it. The fashions of the high streets; anyone sensible should swoon.”

“You think?” Thomas asked, but already that ice which Philip had remembered so well had melted into what Philip remembered that much better. “I imagine you’ve got a flat?”

“A fine imagination,” Philip teased, telling him the address in hushed tones. He rocked back on his heels for a moment before he stopped himself. “You will follow after me, won’t you?”

“You’ve sold me,” Thomas replied, turning his head more fully to Philip’s direction. He watched Thomas’s eyes search him for a moment before they were caught up in one another again; Philip grinned, feeling a tension he hadn’t realised uncoil from around his chest.

“I’ve missed you,” he said simply, turning on his heel to the direction of his flat - back to some beautiful new garden sprung from those seeds of old. 


End file.
